Tag public surplus storage

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. Organization is hard, especially for me. How am I gonna make sense of all this stuff? My first task was to lay out all my tools and miscellaneous equipment so I could see what I had. Some of this stuff has sat in my toolbox for years. As a matter of fact, I found several things I didn’t even know I had.

Oh, once I got everything set out and sorted, I could work on putting it all away in the right places. I needed to do just a little shadowing on my toolbox, which you’ll see in a minute. But otherwise, it was pretty straightforward and boring, which is why I won’t subject you to it. I’ve just started putting things away, and I’ve discovered a problem already, which I’m sure is a problem for a lot of folks. I got a real nice socket set here and a nice socket set here, and they’ve got nice holders. But then I got all this junk over here: ratchets, some more sockets, some loose impact sockets here, and some of this weird stuff and extensions, and it’s all just kind of hanging out. So I really want to get this organized.

And I’m going to take a cue from the Air Force, and I’m going to do—I’m going to shadow my tools. But I don’t really feel like buying the shadow foam because it’s really expensive, and I actually happen to have something here that I can use that’s just been laying around. I’ve got this flooring, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to use it for, you know, probably for cushioning on the floor. Got it from Sam’s not too long ago for a really good price; they had it on sale. But I looked at it and figured, you know, this would be perfect stuff for shadowing my toolbox. I’m not going to shadow everything; I don’t need that crazy level of inventory or detail. But it is really going to help to contain some of those loose items that are rolling around in there.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to cut all the little puzzle pieces off the edges of this, measure it out, cut it to fit, and then start cutting slots for my tools. Let’s see what I got here. It’s about, say, ten and three quarters by sixteen and a half. I’ve decided that I’m going to consider this piece a practice piece, and here’s why. I didn’t lay all this out before; I just started cutting it. And what I’ve discovered is these tools take up a whole lot more room when you shadow them like this than they normally would in your toolbox. So I thought I had plenty of room for all of this stuff, plus even some other sockets, and that’s just not the case.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to move some of this stuff to a different drawer and decrease the spacing between these pieces so that I get a little bit more in this one piece. The other thing that I’ve noticed is that it’s actually really hard to cut a straight line, even with a real nice precision knife set. So you just have to take your time and be careful and go through. Now this stuff is flooring; it’s not made for this, but it does cut okay with this knife. So we’re going to redo this and hopefully get a better result.

And here we are, my first time ever shadowing my toolbox. The cuts are pretty gross, and it was a lot harder and took a lot longer than I expected, but it does the job. And there you go. Hindsight being what it is, I probably would have moved this stuff up a little bit closer to the front so that I could reach back here. But I can still get to this stuff, so it’s not that big a deal. 75 years later, that took longer than I expected. But at least the garage is organized, and I got some cool stuff left over that I was able to use to make up some very useful things.

So let’s take a look. I got this rolling cart a few years ago from my in-laws for Christmas, and it’s pretty cool and was a great gift, but I never really had any use for it until now. With some of the leftover tools that I found and stuff that wouldn’t go anywhere else, I was able to make up a little go box for going to the pickup parts. So I can put any kind of tools in here that I would need to use to pull bits and pieces off of trucks in the field. And now all I gotta do is load this box up in the truck and go. Typically, little boxes like this are used to store medical supplies, but I’m using it as a go box for electrical supplies. So if I have to do any electrical work out in the field or just do a real quick electrical joint, I’ve got all my cutters and snips and fuses. And on the other side of this thing here, I’ve got all my connectors and butt connectors and that kind of stuff. So if I got to do electrical repair out in the field, this could come in handy.

One item that will not be going out in the field with me ever is this toolbox. This toolbox belonged to my grandfather, and now I can use it for simple around-the-house repairs and hanging pictures on the wall. One of the huge problems that I had was having nuts and bolts and washers and screws scattered here, there, and yonder all over the place. So what I decided to do was to go out and get some of these little compartmentalized boxes. Now these here are from Jackson Palmer, actually, and they’re not sponsoring this video or anything. I actually went and bought this with my own money. They actually already come with metric, SAE, and metal and wood screws in the boxes, but I also got an extra one that was empty so that I could put my own stuff in it.

What I managed to do was go through all of these screws that I already had laying around and find in these compartments where the ones that I already had matched what came in these boxes and then fill these compartments up even more with the stuff that I already had. And then anything that was weird or didn’t match, I could put inside of this empty container. And then I also have some spots over here that are sort of random compartmentalized boxes I had laying around for weird things that don’t really fit anywhere else. And all of this stuff goes in my storage unit over there.

I said this before in my garage video that I got these storage units from Public Surplus. Again, not being sponsored; I just love Public Surplus. It is a fantastic place to go to get really cheap stuff. All of these black cabinets, this gray cabinet over here, and the gray cabinet back over here came from Public Surplus, and I think I got each of them for like 15. They came from a university, and they were file storage cabinets, so they work perfect for storing tools and bits and pieces that don’t fit in my toolboxes to help me keep things organized.

I went onto Amazon and bought some of these little dry erase strips that are magnetic that I can just stick right onto my shelving and know exactly what’s inside of there. And all you got to do is just take a dry erase marker, write what you want on there, and stick it on. And if you ever want to change anything, you can just wipe it off. Easy peasy. These are really cool.

Well, there you go. What was probably a pretty short video for you was a week-long adventure for me. But at least now everything’s organized. It’ll be up to me to keep it that way. I don’t have a great history of that, but we shall see. As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks for watching, folks. We’ll see you next time.